Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/703

Rh MECCA 671 quarters of the town. At the northern or upper end was the Bab el Ma la, or gate of the upper quarter, whence the road continues up the valley towards Mind and Arafa as well as towards Zeima and the Nejd. Beyond the gate, in a place called the Hajun, is the chief cemetery, said to be the resting-place of many of the companions of Mohammed. Here a cross-road, running over the hill to join the main Medina road from the western gate, turns off to the west by the pass of Kada, the point from which the troops of the Prophet stormed the city (A.H. 8). 1 Here too the body of Ibn Zubeyr was hung on a cross by Hajjaj. The lower or southern gate, at the Masfala quarter, opened on the Yemen road, where the rain-water from Mecca flows off into an open valley. Beyond, there are mountains on both sides ; on that to the east, commanding the town, is the great castle, a fortress of considerable strength. The third or western gate, Bab el-Omra (formerly also Bdb el- ZAhir, from a village of that name), lay almost opposite the great mosque, and opened on a road leading westwards round the southern spurs of the Red Mountain. This is the way to Wady Fatima and Medina, the Jidda road branching off from it to the left. Considerable suburbs now lie outside the quarter named after this gate ; in the Middle Ages a pleasant country road led for some miles through partly cultivated land with good wells, as far as the boundary of the sacred territory and gathering place of the pilgrims at Tanim, near the mosque of Aisha, This is the spot on the Medina road now called the Omra, from a ceremonial connected with it which will be mentioned below. The length of the sinuous main axis of the city from the furthest suburbs on the Medina road to the suburbs in the extreme north, now frequented by Bedouins, is, according to Burckhardt, 3500 paces. 2 About the middle of this line the longitudinal thoroughfares are pushed aside by the vast courtyard and colonnades composing the great mosque, which, with its spacious arcades surrounding the Kaba and other holy places, and its seven minarets, forms the only prominent architectural feature of the city. The mosque is enclosed by houses with windows opening on the arcades and commanding a view of the Ka ba. Immediately beyond these, on the side facing J. Abu Kobeys, a broad street runs south-east and north-west across the valley. This is the Mas a or sacred course between the eminences of Safa and Merwa, and has been from very early times one of the most lively bazaars and the centre of Meccan life. The other chief bazaars are also near the mosque in smaller streets. The rest of the town presents no points of individual interest, but its general aspect is picturesque ; the streets are fairly spacious, though ill-kept and filthy; the houses are all of stone, many of them well-built and four or five stories high, with terraced roofs and large pro jecting windows as in Jidda a style of building which has not varied materially since the 10th century (Mokaddasf, p. 71), and gains in effect from the way in which the dwell ings run up the sides and spurs of the mountains. Of public institutions there are baths, ribats or hospices for poor pilgrims from India, Java, &c., a hospital with fifty beds, a public kitchen for the poor, badly administered by the Turkish authorities. A settler from India has recently set up a theological school ; but the old colleges around the mosque have long since been converted into lodgings. 3 The minor places of visitation for pilgrims, such as the birth-places of the Prophet and his chief followers, are not 1 This is the cross-road traversed by Burckhardt (i. 109), and described by him as cut through the rocks with much labour. 2 Istrakhri gives the length of the city proper from north to south as 2 miles, and the greatest breadth from the Jiyad quarter east of the great mosque across the valley and up the western slopes as two-thirds of the length. 3 The pious foundations of Mecca have been robbed by their guardians from very early times. See already Ibn Haukal, p. 25. notable. 4 Both these and the court of the great mosque are observed to lie beneath the general level of the city, so that it is evident that the site of the town has been gradually raised by accumulated rubbish. The town in fact has little air of antiquity; genuine Arab buildings do not last long, especially in a valley periodically ravaged by tremendous floods when the tropical rains burst on the surrounding hills. The history of Mecca is full of the record of these inundations, unsuccessfully combated by the great dam drawn across the valley by the caliph Omar (Kutb el-Din, p. 76), and later works of El-Mahdi, 5 The fixed population of Mecca in 1878 was estimated by Assistant-Surgeon Abd el-Razzak at 50,000 to 60,000; but the mate-rials for an estimate are very inadequate where there is so large a floating population and that not merely at the proper season of pilgrimage, the pilgrims of one season often beginning to arrive before those of the former season have all dispersed. At the height of the season the town is much overcrowded, and the entire want of a drainage system is severely felt. Fortunately good water is tolerably plentiful; for, though the wells are mostly undrinkable, and even the famous Zamzam water very un wholesome and tainted with sewage, the underground con duit from beyond Arafa, completed by Sultan Selim II. in 1571, supplies to the public fountains a sweet and light water, containing, according to Abd el-Razzak, a large amount of chlorides. The water is said to be free to townsmen, but is sold to the pilgrims at a rather high rate. 6 Mediaeval writers celebrate the copious supplies, especially of fine fruits, brought to the city from Taif and other fertile parts of Arabia. These fruits are still famous ; rice and other foreign products are brought by sea to Jidda ; mutton is plentifully supplied from the desert. 7 The industries of Mecca all centre in the pilgrim age ; the chief object of every Meccan from the notables and sheikhs, who use their influence to gain custom for the Jidda speculators in the pilgrim traffic, down to the cicerones, pilgrim brokers, lodging-house keepers, and semi-mendicant hangers on at the holy places being to pillage the visiter in every possible way. Thus the fanaticism of the Meccan is an affair of the purse ; the mongrel population (for the town is by no means purely Arab) has exchanged the virtues of the Bedouin for the worst corruptions of Eastern town life, without casting off the ferocity of the desert, and it is hardly possible to find a worse certificate of character than the three parallel gashes ou each cheek, called Tashrit, which are the customary mark of birth in the holy city. The unspeakable vices of Mecca are a scandal to all Islam, and a constant source of wonder to pious pilgrims. 8 The slave trade, which still 4 For details as to the ancient quarters of Mecca, where the several families or septs lived apart from generation to generation, see Azraki, p. 445 sq., and compare Ya kubi, ed. Juynboll, p. 100. The modem town is best described by Burckhardt, who gives a plan of the city. The minor sacred places are described at length by Azraki and Ibn Jubair. They are either connected with genuine memories of the Prophet and his times, or have spurious legends to conceal the fact that they were originally holy stones, wells, or the like, of heathen sanctity. 5 Beladhori, in his chapter on the floods of Mecca (p. 53 sq. ), says that Omar built two dams. 6 The aqueduct is the successor of an older one associated with the names of Zobeyda, wife of Harim el-Rashid, and other benefactors. But the old aqueduct was frequently out of repair, and seems to have played but a secondary part in the mediaeval water supply. Even the new aqueduct gave no adequate supply in Burckhardt s time. 7 In Ibn Jubair s time (p. 132) large supplies were brought from the Yemen mountains. The revenues of Yemen are still mainly expended on the distribution of grain by the sultan in the Hijaz. 8 The corruption of manners in Mecca is no new thing. See the letter of the caliph Mahdi on the subject ; Wiistenfeld, Chron. Mek. , iv. 168.